/tg/Station 13

The main issues with heretic (in no particular order) as I see on MRP, though parts of this will be apply to LRP too are

1. Defacto uncontainability - Heretics gain access to an undisarmable pseudo-baton almost immediately, and the only easy ways to get rid of it is to dearm them entirely, to brainwash them with the E.P.I.C, or to mute them forever, two of which (E.P.I.C and genetics muting) are unavailable to security at roundstart, one of which (muting) dramatically cuts down on possible interaction between the captured antag and security anyway, and one of which (dearming) is basically just GBJing someone to a degree largely indistinguishable from locking them in a windowless room. This undermines efforts by security and the crew at large to non-lethally arrest and detain heretics, and promotes a kill the valid on sight mentality...[snip]

2. Automatic Round Removal - When heretics kill and sacrifice people they entirely gib their bodies, destroying any gear they were carrying and leaving their bodiless head in some dark corner of maintenance. Even in the absolute ideal cases this dramatically slows down how soon it is POSSIBLE to get people back into the round and playing the game, on a server where rounds can last upwards of two hours, and realistically once things start going to shit bodiless heads are at the bottom of the triage pole, and probably aren't getting revived at all. People as a general rule don't like being killed and round removed, even people who are happy to take a fall if it makes the round more interesting overall generally aren't too thrilled to get summarily yeeted from playing the game, and thus people push back at successful heretics even harder than with other antagonists, because a heretic being successful almost always means people are getting round removed, and that's both not fun to actually play...[snip]

3. Ascension is stupid - In hindsight having an antag who gets a murderbone pass for being really good at reliably murdering people was a stupid fucking decision. Ascension is too hard for new players to the antag type, requiring a pretty good idea of what you plan to do and how you plan to go about it to succeed, and is way too easy for experienced Heretics with a cookie cutter plan on how to make as many targets dead as quickly as possible so that they can stop bothering with targets and just kill everyone. I get that Heretic is a massive ripoff off cultist sim flavour and cultist sim flavour is very good flavour, but ascension in it's current format is just terrible, and needs either a massive rework to how it works or to just fucking go.

Adam Klein wrote: ↑Tue Nov 16, 2021 10:15 pm In counter to that, I’d argue that being gibbed and removed from the shift is also boring.

Farquaar wrote: ↑Tue Nov 16, 2021 10:17 pm

Adam Klein wrote: ↑Tue Nov 16, 2021 10:15 pm In counter to that, I’d argue that being gibbed and removed from the shift is also boring.

False. If nobody dies, then threats have no meaning. Imminent danger raises the stakes and makes the game more interesting.

Adam Klein wrote: ↑Tue Nov 16, 2021 9:02 pm Imagine being semi forced to Unga bunga round remove people for power. With the current state of LRP and the potential banning of lowpop murderbone, I say we purge one of the biggest threats to remaining in the shift. Being forced to murderbone and round remove for power =bad. Heretic bad, traitor good. Nuff said

thomanthewise5404 wrote: ↑Tue Nov 16, 2021 10:49 pm

Adam Klein wrote: ↑Tue Nov 16, 2021 9:02 pm Imagine being semi forced to Unga bunga round remove people for power. With the current state of LRP and the potential banning of lowpop murderbone, I say we purge one of the biggest threats to remaining in the shift. Being forced to murderbone and round remove for power =bad. Heretic bad, traitor good. Nuff said

theres nothing wrong with murderboning/round removing. it creates conflict, which is far more interesting than some friendly gimmick or stealth antag that just silently does his objectives

Adam Klein wrote: ↑Tue Nov 16, 2021 10:54 pm

thomanthewise5404 wrote: ↑Tue Nov 16, 2021 10:49 pm

Adam Klein wrote: ↑Tue Nov 16, 2021 9:02 pm Imagine being semi forced to Unga bunga round remove people for power. With the current state of LRP and the potential banning of lowpop murderbone, I say we purge one of the biggest threats to remaining in the shift. Being forced to murderbone and round remove for power =bad. Heretic bad, traitor good. Nuff said

theres nothing wrong with murderboning/round removing. it creates conflict, which is far more interesting than some friendly gimmick or stealth antag that just silently does his objectives

I don’t believe just wanting to do your job and then getting gibbed by funny man so he can increase his murderbone powers is fun for the person getting gibbed.

Mothblocks wrote: ↑Wed Nov 17, 2021 12:06 am The primary objective of heretic is to ascend, which is not possible without gibbing several people, considering how infrequent realities are (which had to be lowered a long time ago).

What gimmicks you can do as heretic are paltry compared to what you can do with traitor, which is a lot easier to design with considering how vast the uplink is.

Mothblocks wrote: ↑Wed Nov 17, 2021 12:40 am Code changes haven't been made for heretic, despite several calls for it. The scope then moves into policy discussion until anything is done to change how dreadful it is to play with.

While i'm not a coder, adjusting the number of rifts per round seems like a simple change. More rifts should give them less of a reliance on gibbing people.

Anyway, I don't see a major difference between george melons breaking into my workplace with an esword and telebaton and killing me, versus him breaking into my workplace with a funny hand and a curved knife and killing me.

ardentarclight wrote: ↑Tue Nov 16, 2021 11:29 pm Heretic has a great thematic, and I'd hate to see it go to waste. I've noticed that most heretics forego doing objectives completely, perhaps giving another alternate way of getting points from a series of objectives given to you would allieviate the amount of round removal, although this would require some point-reshuffling

• Meaningful lore/hooks for RP. Part of why it's so murderbone-driven, in my opinion, is that there's no real flavor of fluff to it.
• Power variety. They have no mechanical support for any playstyle other than Assassination Murderbone or Open Combat Murderbone, and a bunch of the powers seem sort of superfluous, either being skipped entirely
• Literally any ability to figure out what the fuck you're doing without the Wiki. Even basic tasks like sacrifice are beyond new players without looking it up.
• More methods of getting points, maybe? You've basically got "Rush the nodes" and "Murder," and murders seem to be a bit inconsistent in terms of how secure the target is vs how much you get for sacrificing

TheFinalPotato wrote: ↑Wed Nov 17, 2021 2:18 am Code issue. This is how it's been done in the past though so eh, give people time to save it if they want to

Hulkamania wrote: ↑Wed Nov 17, 2021 4:15 am

TheFinalPotato wrote: ↑Wed Nov 17, 2021 2:18 am Code issue. This is how it's been done in the past though so eh, give people time to save it if they want to

It wouldn't exist in the config if it wasn't a config/headmin issue.

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Mothblocks wrote: ↑Wed Nov 17, 2021 12:06 am The primary objective of heretic is to ascend, which is not possible without gibbing several people, considering how infrequent realities are (which had to be lowered a long time ago).

What gimmicks you can do as heretic are paltry compared to what you can do with traitor, which is a lot easier to design with considering how vast the uplink is.

nianjiilical wrote: ↑Wed Nov 17, 2021 9:04 am

Mothblocks wrote: ↑Wed Nov 17, 2021 12:06 am The primary objective of heretic is to ascend, which is not possible without gibbing several people, considering how infrequent realities are (which had to be lowered a long time ago).

What gimmicks you can do as heretic are paltry compared to what you can do with traitor, which is a lot easier to design with considering how vast the uplink is.

what if heretics had some way to spend their points on bringing more pierced realities to the station, as a way to try and go for a more passive break-and-enter playstyle

Cosmodeus wrote: ↑Wed Nov 17, 2021 6:22 pm Potential banning of lowpop murder boning? I've yet to see low pop murderboning = bans and more so low pop murderboning = people putting you on their personal shit lists. If you're playing heretic in low pop and kill only your targets, then good for you. Tis not low pop murder boney. Guess what else? You can CHOOSE as a heretic to kill people or to wait for more players to join the server and make a one for one trade off as new players join the station. You don't have to kill people as heretic unless you are preventing a shuttle call or things like that. Give some examples of heretics getting banned for not killing anybody.

Mothblocks wrote: ↑Wed Nov 17, 2021 7:36 pm The difference is heretic offers you much less leg room, and near exclusively tells you to just gib a ton of people so you can murderbone some more.

Mothblocks wrote:Uncontainability is a problem because it reinforces that security should just gun down every antagonist they see, which is an unhealthy style of gameplay to promote, we get that plenty with other antagonists and don't need another.

sinfulbliss wrote: ↑Thu Nov 18, 2021 9:47 am

Mothblocks wrote:Uncontainability is a problem because it reinforces that security should just gun down every antagonist they see, which is an unhealthy style of gameplay to promote, we get that plenty with other antagonists and don't need another.

This gameplay is promoted because any other response is impractical for security. As a rule of thumb, I usually execute antags above 45-50pop, simply because it is almost impossible to contain them safely. There are too many other threats to risk having them back in the round. Every security player on LRP does this as well apart from a select few.

Pandarsenic wrote: ↑Thu Nov 18, 2021 11:03 am

sinfulbliss wrote: ↑Thu Nov 18, 2021 9:47 am

Mothblocks wrote:Uncontainability is a problem because it reinforces that security should just gun down every antagonist they see, which is an unhealthy style of gameplay to promote, we get that plenty with other antagonists and don't need another.

This gameplay is promoted because any other response is impractical for security. As a rule of thumb, I usually execute antags above 45-50pop, simply because it is almost impossible to contain them safely. There are too many other threats to risk having them back in the round. Every security player on LRP does this as well apart from a select few.

I think that's what they're saying is the problem though

As a rule of thumb, I usually execute antags above 45-50pop, simply because it is almost impossible to contain them safely.

Mothblocks wrote: ↑Thu Nov 18, 2021 7:23 pm

As a rule of thumb, I usually execute antags above 45-50pop, simply because it is almost impossible to contain them safely.

Gee, doesn't sound like something we should be promoting more of to me!

Mothblocks wrote:You are still neglecting to acknowledge that murderboning, round removal, etc is all very much doable as traitor. There's a difference between allowing unhealthy styles of gameplay and actively promoting them.

Mothblocks wrote: ↑Fri Nov 19, 2021 8:53 pm SS13 is a game about interacting with other people and creating interesting stories from the chaos that arises. These stories are best when they are past there was a guy killing people and I killed them, and especially not in the vein of just executing every antagonist you see, when they are meant to be the driving force of the round. SS13 is a game about stories, and not about raw PvP.

Mothblocks wrote:Whether or not I think murderbone should be allowed (a question of policy, and out of scope for the topic at hand) is different from whether the code of the game should encourage it (a question of design), which is a direction maintainers have been moving the game away from.

Mothblocks wrote: ↑Fri Nov 19, 2021 9:44 pm No, they're completely separate areas of concern.

Mothblocks wrote: ↑Sat Nov 20, 2021 6:03 am Which is not in the realm of a policy discussion, as we can't configure heretics to have different spells.